School Counselors Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk: A Grounded Theory of Effective Program Implementation

Abstract

Comprehensive, developmental school counseling programming has been associated with numerous benefits for students and is considered current best practice. A qualitative, grounded theory study was conducted to investigate eight professional school counselors employed across grade level, geographic setting, and region within the United States. This article presents this research and the emergent model for successful comprehensive, developmental school counseling program implementation. Implications for school counselor education and practice, as well as future research, are discussed.

Predicting School Counselors’ Supports and Challenges When Implementing the ASCA National Model

“…School counselors’ perceptions and beliefs about comprehensive school counseling programs (e.g., Scarborough & Luke, 2008; Sink & Yilik-Downer, 2001) may relate to implementation of such programs and of the ASCA National Model. For example, Dahir, Burnham, and Stone (2009) reported that differences in school counselors’ attitudes, beliefs, and priorities across grade levels impacted student well-being.…”

Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP) and Student Outcomes in Elementary and Middle Schools

“…The ASCA National Model (2019a) serves as the most recent iteration in a 50-year charge toward developing comprehensive school counseling programs in K–12 educational settings. By establishing a set of developmental student competencies (e.g., mind-sets and behaviors) and a common framework for developing, implementing, and evaluating counseling programs (Scarborough & Luke, 2008), the ASCA National Model helps school counselors implement comprehensive, data-driven school counseling programs and has been used as a measure of accountability for key stakeholders (ASCA, 2019a). Following the results-based models of accountability espoused by Johnson and Johnson (2003), the ASCA National Model focuses not only on what services should be implemented but also on the impact of those services on students.…”

Untitled

“…As there is an established link within the school counseling literature between exposure to specific topics and experiences in counselor training and subsequent attitudes and behaviors in practice (Chao, 2013;Scarborough & Luke, 2008), there are several potential implications for counselor educators and supervisors. First, school counselor education programs may benefit from an internal audit to assess when and how the curricula addresses professional identity and peer membership.…”

“…Role ambiguity and role conflict has also been implicated as barriers to school counselor professional identity (Baggerly & Osborn, 2006;Cervoni & DeLucia-Waack, 2011;Dodato, 2014). Hence, more training opportunities are needed to support some school counselors to successfully navigate this and become exemplary school counselor practitioners (Scarborough & Luke, 2008) and school counselor leaders (Dollarhide, Gibson, & Saginak, 2008) with strong professional peer group affiliation and identities.…”